US birth rate hits new low

The birth rate in the US has fallen to its lowest level in recorded history.

The Pew Research Center reports that the birth rate in 2011—the last year for which figures are available—was 63.2 per 1,000 women of childbearing age. That rate shows a decline of 8% since 2007.

During the “baby boom” in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the US birth rate was well over 100, peaking at 122.7—nearly double the 2011 rate—in 1957.

The birth rate among native-born American women was even lower than the overall rate, at 58.9. Foreign-born mothers, who account for only 17% of the American women of childbearing age, produced 23% of the babies.

Yet the birth rate among foreign-born women dropped in 2011 by 14%-- much faster than the rate for native-born American women.

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